Hannah Beech, Jambi – When the flowers could no longer summon the gods, the healer knew it was time to leave the forest.

As a traditional healer of the Orang Rimba, or forest people, here on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, Temenggung Tarip had long depended on jungle blooms to conjure the divine for his seminomadic indigenous community. An offering of colorful petals would bring the elephant god, skilled at curing toothaches, or the tiger god, helpful for those who had lost their way.

But timber, rubber, paper and palm oil plantations have encroached on the forests of Indonesia. Since 2000, about 15 percent of the nation's tree cover has disappeared.

In Jambi, the central Sumatran province that is home to a few thousand Orang Rimba, the amount of deforestation is even higher, at 32 percent since the turn of the century, according to Global Forest Watch.

With the land defiled, the flowers no longer worked their magic, Mr. Tarip said. The gods did not come. Toothaches remained unhealed. "We didn't protect the forest, so the forest didn't protect us," he said.

Over the past decade, most of the forest people of Jambi, Mr. Tarip included, have emerged from the jungle, driven both by the rampant deforestation and an Indonesian government policy to settle these tribes of hunter-gatherers and farmers.

A court ruling five years ago was supposed to protect the right of indigenous peoples to live undisturbed in their native habitat, but corporate farming continued to encroach on the national park the Orang Rimba called home.

Last month, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia signed a moratorium on new palm oil plantation development throughout the country for the next three years.

Now, only about 1,000 Orang Rimba families still live in the rain forest. Particularly destructive to their way of life were the fires agro-industrialists set to clear the forests for plantations. Choking fumes drifted over Orang Rimba land. The wild animals that formed the backbone of their diet, along with wild yams, could not survive among the monoculture plantations. Hunger stalked the Orang Rimba.

Since leaving the forest eight years ago, Mr. Tarip, who estimates that he is about 60, has converted to Islam, the dominant religion of Indonesia. On national identity cards, a necessity for life outside the jungle, all Indonesians must select one from among six faiths. Animist flower worship is not among the choices.

Today, Mr. Tarip lives with his wife, Putri Tija Sanggul, in a concrete shell in Sarolangun, a three-day walk from the wilderness that used to be their home. The only reminder of nature in their new house is a bunch of purple orchids that cascades down a wall. The flowers are plastic.

Missionaries, both Muslim and Christian, have tried to ease the transition to what the Orang Rimba call "the outside." Beyond the obvious differences – concrete walls, processed food, brightly colored plastic – the outside is confounding in other ways.

The forest was cool, sunlight barely penetrating the dense foliage. Concrete, by contrast, holds the heat. Sleeping in the stuffy confines of his home is something to which Mr. Tarip is still not accustomed.

Ms. Sanggul, Mr. Tarip's wife, often claws at the veil around her head and hitches up her dress to air her legs. She is a princess of her Orang Rimba tribe, and her noble lineage meant she could conjure the forest spirits with ease until one day, she said, she couldn't. "The gods took away my gift," Ms. Sanggul said.

As a community leader, one who lives in a proper concrete house with plastic flowers, Mr. Tarip was hailed by a former governor of Jambi as a role model for the Orang Rimba. He has ridden in an elevator and in an airplane, which took him to Mecca for an all-expenses-paid pilgrimage.

The Saudi desert, sere and brown, was about as different from the verdant rain forest as Mr. Tarip could imagine. But it confirmed his faith, even if several of his grandchildren are Christian. "Mecca is real," he said. "The rest is just stories."Image

Nevertheless, Mr. Tarip still respects indigenous traditions. Four of his daughters and three of his sons remain in the jungle, and he knows that by visiting them he could compromise their communion with nature.

The list of Orang Rimba taboos is long and includes soap, fried chicken and certain clothes like the Muslim prayer cap Mr. Tarip now wears. Perfume is also prohibited. "The gods don't like artificial smells," Mr. Tarip said.

Mr. Tarip's conversion was facilitated by his son-in-law, Rahmat, who is from the outside. The child of a family of transmigrasi – settlers from crowded parts of Indonesia who were given government incentives to work the land in remote places like Sarolangun – Mr. Rahmat said he grew up not certain whether the Orang Rimba were human or not.

"They stole fruit from us," he said. "So we taught them the Quran and they learned how to be better."

Mr. Rahmat, who goes by one name, married Mr. Tarip's daughter in 2012. He is a member of the Islamic Defenders Front, a professed morality force that has raided nightclubs and other places deemed un-Islamic.

Dressed in white robes, members of the Islamic Defenders Front lead mass conversions of the forest people and march through villages of settled Orang Rimba to remind them to pray five times a day.

But piety is a cheap commodity in some villages where the Orang Rimba now live. "I don't know why I am a Muslim but I am," said Rokima, an elderly Orang Rimba woman who lives in a wooden shack.

A picture of Mecca decorated one of her walls but Ms. Rokima, who also goes by one name, said she had no idea what the photograph, a gift from a local official, meant. "I had my own gods in the forest but I cannot go back to the forest because there is no forest left anymore," she said, of her birthplace by a river.

Even Mr. Rahmat, Mr. Tarip's son-in-law, admitted his own wife was an imperfect convert. She maintains a preference for wild pig, a forbidden meat in Islam. Mohammed Asrul, a transmigrasi village chief from Nyogan village in Jambi, is also married to an Orang Rimba woman. More forest people should follow his wife's path, he said. "They will only make progress if they marry outsiders," he said.

To survive on the outside, Mr. Tarip has planted rubber and oil palm on some of his customary land, which he owns because of his indigenous status, even though he knows the crop is responsible for destroying his old way of life.

The tenacious root structures of the African oil palm make it hard for other plants to flourish, even after the crop cycle is done. Pesticides used to maintain the plantations despoil rivers, even as they have contributed to a product that feeds a global hunger for cheap snacks, cosmetics and biofuel.

Worst of all, oil palms, with their blood-red fruit, do not produce colorful blooms. "The gods like fancy flowers," Mr. Tarip said. "They are angry when no one brings them flowers."

[Muktita Suhartono contributed reporting.]

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/14/world/asia/indonesia-sumatra-orang-rimba.html